Every once in a while my iPod serves up a song that is so perfect for an exact moment in time. This week, in the midst of sorrow and cloud filled skies, it was Nine Inch Nail’s “Beside You in Time” from With Teeth.
I will freely admit to anyone that I really like Trent Reznor in a celebrity crush sort of way. But beyond that, I do find the music he makes to be extremely insightful and intelligent. His art focuses often on emotions that we don’t always want to face within ourselves–grief, guilt, anger, obsession and addiction in its ugly core.
This song, in its droning dark choruses and verses, deals with the topic of lost lives and the cold muteness of the world, in which small glimpses of words and sounds come through. It is the final rejection of freedom of which the French absurdist Albert Camus wrote; suicide becomes the only way that the protagonist of the song can gain a path to oblivion and reunion.
Its been a rough week Trent; thanks for being there again in empathy.
skullwoman 